The latest addition to Stephen Hough’s extensive Hyperion catalogue—an album of Hough’s Piano Concerto, Sonatina & Partita—is another fruitful association between composer-pianist and label. The concerto’s subtitle ‘The world of yesterday’ works on more than one level, evoking the history of the piano concerto form as well as the title of Stefan Zweig’s eponymous memoir, itself a nostalgic reflection on the cultural milieu of early twentieth-century Vienna. As Hough writes in his characteristically engaging booklet note, the piano concerto was the public face of the pianist-composers of the past, their calling card: it hardly needs adding that his own marks an important contribution to the genre. Recorded in May last year, this performance documents the work’s UK premiere with Sir Mark Elder and The Hallé providing exemplary support; and the inclusion of two concise works for solo piano completes Hyperion’s very special Record of the Month for March.

Nicky Spence and Julius Drake bring their trademark ‘thrilling ardour’ (BBC Record Review) to a recital of Fauré’s La bonne chanson & other songs. The composer’s song output spanned some sixty years, sustained by his melodic gifts and a talent for selecting first-rate texts by the greatest French poets of the day. The album begins with what surely represents the art of Fauré’s song writing at its peak, the impassioned cycle La bonne chanson, with the Piatti Quartet participating in the composer’s revised accompaniment for piano and string quintet.

Five further releases in our Vinyl Edition are issued this month. All are new to vinyl, having previously been available only on CD and to download or stream, and all have been chosen to represent the Hyperion label at its very best.

We start with nothing less than the Complete works for piano and orchestra of Camille Saint-Saëns in multi-award-winning performances from Sir Stephen Hough and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sakari Oramo. Spread across three LPs, all five concertos are here plus no fewer than four additional works by way of encores. And there are more grand orchestral works too, with Steven Isserlis and the Philharmonia Orchestra performing the Elgar & Walton Cello Concertos. Paavo Järvi conducts a collection welcomed in 2016 by Gramophone magazine as ‘an unmissable release’. The members of The Gesualdo Six may not have been alive when vinyl was last in vogue, but here they have chosen their remarkable 2017 debut album of English Motets as a showcase for their abundant talents. And from the Takács Quartet we have a pair of Mendelssohn String Quartets: Fanny’s sole contribution to the genre plus Felix’s heartfelt Op 80, composed in grief at his sister’s premature death. Finally, from Steven Osborne it is a great pleasure to present his 2016 album of Claude Debussy’s Images, Estampes & Children’s Corner: ‘Music-making of great subtlety and finesse which neither lovers of Debussy and French music nor those who value piano-playing on the highest artistic level will want to miss’ (Gramophone).

New releases from Signum Classics this month welcome a fifth album from Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia Orchestra, here with Shostakovich Symphony No 10. Gramophone enthused over these forces’ previous recording (‘Rouvali proves himself a persuasive Shostakovich conductor’) and the dramatic work recorded here gives his resplendent orchestra every opportunity to shine. The King’s Singers turn to the rich seam of repertoire written around the turn of the twentieth century, Such stuff as dreams are made on including masterpieces by Ravel and Debussy, Vaughan Williams and Elgar, Hugo Alfvén and more. While the ever-surprising pianist James Rhodes has created Manía, ‘a playlist of pieces that accompany me and my insomnia, my anxiety, my desperation and my fears in the middle of the night and provide the kind of relief that only music and prescription meds can give’.

A new album from Decca Classics sees Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic joining forces for the rarely recorded Khachaturian Piano Concerto. Jean-Yves is the modern-day champion of this work, once famous in the hands of virtuosi such as William Kapell and Oscar Levant, and this live performance finds him ‘deftly working the extremes of flashy dynamism and feathery ruminations’ (Los Angeles Times). The album is completed by a generous selection of solo piano works, including the immortal Adagio from Spartacus and a savage transcription (by Oscar Levant) of the famous ‘Sabre dance’.

A new album from the Magdalena Consort and Fretwork is always a treat. Here they present a third volume in their In chains of gold series exploring the further reaches of the English pre-Restoration verse anthem repertory. The programme features anthems of praise, prayer and remembrance, with contributions from His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts and palate-cleansing organ solos played by Silas Wollston on the ‘St Teilo’ organ by Goetze and Gwynn.

A new recording from Decca Classics brings the super-abundant talents of Christian Li fully to the fore: the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto holds no fears for this prodigy of our time. The concerto enjoys backing support from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, while pianist Nicola Eimer joins Christian for some rather lighter encore fare.

On the streets and in the sky & other works by Jonathan Dove is the latest fruit of the composer’s long relationship with the Sacconi Quartet. The title comes from Dove’s String Quartet No 2, commissioned by the quartet, and the programme also includes an enigmatic song cycle for baritone (Philippe Sly) and string quartet and a work for piano duet (performed by Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva), before the final Vanishing gold, again for string quartet and inspired by a curious pair of now-extinct animals …

The London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Antonio Pappano have recorded Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the wordless voices of Tenebrae adding a touch of the ethereal to this performance captured live in the Barbican in April 2024 by the engineers of LSO Live. First performed in 1912, this is one of Ravel’s most mighty works and—as with Stravinsky’s epic ballet scores from the same period—has become a thrilling concert work in its own right.

The title may sound innocent enough, but Vivaldi Opus 8 Volume 1 hides a most astonishing new recording of The Four Seasons, violinist-cum-director Adrian Chandler leading La Serenissima on a whirlwind traversal which demands to be heard. Four further violin concertos, one a double concerto, complete this new Signum album.

New from historical piano label APR we have Cécile Chaminade and her contemporaries play Chaminade. Included are some of the very earliest recordings of all (Chaminade herself, captured on disc in 1901), while the set as a whole reminds us how fast-changing fashions can allow a block-busting composer to be consigned to the shadows almost overnight, awaiting ‘discovery’ decades later by new generations of enterprising artists.